Learning By Design – Page 2

Learning by Design – Interactions and Play for Ages 6-8

Children in this age range begin to exhibit creativity and deviate from the constraints of mimicry to explore the world, though they still enjoy copying patterns and shapes. They also prefer to play with children similar to themselves and want to spend increasing amounts of time with friends. As their physical skills develop, these children want to test their skills and get better with them. And this is where differentiation between children begins in earnest. Their likes and dislikes become more pronounced as a child gravitates towards their particular interests.

The games a child often plays during this time take into account the increased desire to problem-solve, plan, and build. Games like Monopoly, Aggravation, and Battleship, play into these strengths and foster further development of these skills. Physical games like tag; hide and seek; and duck, duck, goose (a game about risk assessment) also help this age range learn to navigate the world through snap decisions while also acclimating the child to the growth changes they undergo with the lengthening of their limbs. These games also help combat the ungainliness children may feel during this phase of their lives. The awkwardness they experience includes growing awareness of not just the world, but the distinctness of gender identification. It is partially from this and cultural norms that gendered board games exist and garner the children’s attention.

Some of the areas where individualization comes in is the concept of personal collections. Kids begin to create collections of their belongings. This coincides with their growing sense of order and structure. At the same time, this age group sees the dawning of empathy as the child goes from being self-centered to viewing things from the perspective of others. While these kids may or may not be selfless, they are more likely to share and prefer communal activities. Kids of this age are also starting to internalize information and rely on conceptual frameworks as much as literal and external references.

Tools and Games for Ages 6-8

Tools and Games for Ages 9-12

Learning by Design – Tools and Games for Ages 6-8

At this age range, children have passed through many of the developmental milestones necessary to be fully independent (they can dress, eat, and bathe themselves without assistance). They are able to participate in most perennial favorites found in many retail stores. Such games have a mass appeal and cover the base mechanics found in more complex games found in hobby shops. The games that kids start to play more often have a higher level of abstraction so that the skills rewarded in game play become the focus. Games of this type include Sorry! and Parcheesi/Ludo alongside Trouble and the like.

This age group also sees kids play games that have systems of multiple moving parts (checkers, chess and Stratego) and those that require multi-dimensional thought (Battleship and Connect Four). One of the things to note is that kids at this age start to specialize in game play that interests them the most. Thematically, games also start to diversify, some enter the territory of gendered roles. Such games have biological motivations informing their design, but the predominant motive is social constructs of gender identity. Kids should be encouraged to play whatever games they want, effectively ignoring such messaging unless it makes them uncomfortable.

In regards to games this age group should be able to play and design, they are still at the stage of replicating some of their favorite games. That said, this age group also sees kids experimenting with rules by adding new twists on their favorite games (e.g. freeze tag) and adding new rules that make games more challenging without losing the original game in the process. The mastery of the previous level and the mechanics tested and mastered at this age gives a larger body of experiences and source material for the designer to draw from. As such, the designer can begin to experiment with concepts not yet fully grasped to fully learn them. Tools include the following:

Multiple pieces in play per side.
Pieces may have their own rules for movement, as with chess.
Rules are still linear procedures, but allow for freedom of exploration and variation.

Interactions and Play for Pre-K – Kindergarten

Interactions and Play for Ages 6-8

Learning by Design – Interactions and Play for Pre-K – Kindergarten

As with the 0-24 month crowd, this age group has a lot of developmental milestones, but they are spaced further apart as a child masters the use of their own body and begin to manipulate the world around them. This increases the sense of independence a child has as they are no longer subject to the world happening to them. But there is also a bit of stress that occurs at this time for a child. There is the sense of freedom coupled with constraints and anxiety. Children want to explore the world they are able to change while needing reassurance that it will remain the same. The terrible twos is a direct reflection of this as children simultaneously need security and push the boundaries of what they can do, hence in part the use of “no” for everything. Emotions are still overwhelming and often get expressed in violent behavior (throwing objects, kicking, etc.).

By the time children reach three, they can communicate some of their ideas, needs, and wants. They also begin to understand causality, which leads to the “why” phase. The brain is still trying to process how the world works, but now it perceives that there is some sort of order hidden and adults somehow know the answers since they easily move through the world. This is also the age where games of random chance start to fascinate kids, which is why such games dominate the toy aisle for this age. Three-year-olds also start sharing more and find joy in group play, start drawing pictures, and balancing on one leg.

Four-year-olds are well on the way to mastering basic grammar and often do so before kindergarten begins. They often are starting to transition from single-piece games to those with multiple pieces per player. The base mechanics of such games are often the same, but the added strategy of choice enters their play options. Thus, by the time a child reaches five years of age, most of the experiences are in place for kids to play any number of games relying on sensory input, communication, and body coordination. At this age, the child is likely to play a game like hide-and-seek as easily as a sit-down game without losing interest.

Tools and Games for Pre-K – Kindergarten

Tools and Games for Ages 6-8

Learning by Design – Tools and Games for Pre-K – Kindergarten

From age two through five, kids develop a lot of skills that help them navigate through the world. Games design is possible around age four and up, but from three on, kids can duplicate some of the games they play. This is a marker of the need to feel stability in their lives as the world grows increasingly larger. Like the 0-24 months crowd, kids from two to three are still learning how their bodies function and how to communicate with their parents. They also pass through a few stages that span the transition from purely physical games to conceptual ones that use boards. Some of these younger players may not have yet mastered object permanency and object constancy, which makes some types of games too difficult to play.

Finger plays, nursery rhymes, playfully twisting language into nonsensical words, and the like are part of the activities that many two- and three-year-olds enjoy as it combines both the familiarity they need to feel secure as well as the stretching of their sense of agency. These play activities are crucial for development of the child’s imagination and library of experiences that help them move out of a pure sensory world to one that requires reasoning, problem solving, and logic skills. This accounts for the seemingly uniform design in many of the games kids play. Most of the games available for children from three on focus primarily on simple random events while reinforcing concepts of colors, shapes, numbers, and so on. By the time children are ready for kindergarten, they often are ready for more challenging games, like chess and checkers.

Game design is quite limited for this group and most of the games they can create require a lot of assistance from caregivers to not only articulate, but also require a bit of pre-fabricated pieces as framework for their expression. This is due in part to the lack of experiences. One of the biggest contributors beyond the child’s memories is the internalization mechanisms needed to make games, which they start to develop by the end of kindergarten.

Imitation games are one of the game types kids of this age enjoy. Part of this can be attributed to the desire to grow up faster, but it is a further attempt to understand the world as it exists. This is the age range where kids go through the “why” phase as well as testing the limits of their autonomy. Kids see their caregivers as being able to do whatever they want and the child wants to do the same. The mimicry exhibited is an attempt to create a sense of authority and power while learning roles in the household, which often is the extent of the child’s world. Kids use this play to internalize behaviors they see. All of this leads this age range to absorb as much information as possible.

As kids in this age range often play board games that work to improve memory skills, counting, matching, and object/color recognition, the types of games they can design will be close facsimiles of the games they play. The types of tools available to help them include:

Cut-and-paste track pieces
Pre-made boards
Track templates of various shapes for tracing out the game’s spaces (also useful for those with disabilities)

Interactions and Play for 0-24 Months

Interactions and Play for Pre-K – Kindergarten

Learning by Design – Interactions and Play for 0-24 Months

Games and toys for this age group focus on developing these early skills. Hence, there are a lot of tactile features for textures, colors and shapes, agency, and an assortment of sounds from language to music. Games are also highly dependent on parental interaction as this is the primary source of child development given the presence of the baby’s parents is a source of constancy and provides assurance that as overwhelming as things may be, the world can be learned. Rattles and the like contribute to this as the connections are made that the infant’s actions give it some control over the environment.

Brain development at this age is rapid and can seem overwhelming. The mind has to accumulate as much information as it can to navigate the world. Thus, infants begin babbling, grasping, and tugging on their bodies as soon as their muscle strength allows them to, which is within the first seven months. During this time, babies also start using their hands using a claw-like grip on objects before learning to use a more sophisticated pinching grip and finally progressing to something adults take for granted: a normal-style grip. Babies begin to babble at this time as their brains work to acquire language skills. Their eyesight takes time to develop from seeing less than a foot away to developing binocular vision, giving them depth perception.

There are a lot of games to play with babies and they all have to do with further developing their senses and physical capabilities. The web is full of articles that cover this topic and provide not just the games to play by month, but also the areas of development they foster. All of these show the importance of play. These activities encourage a child’s mastery of their bodies and their imagination. Encouraging this behavior is not only good for child development, it also lays the groundwork for the experiences that let kids design their own games.

Tools and Games for 0-24 Months

Tools and Games for Pre-K – Kindergarten

Learning by Design – Tools and Games for 0-24 Months

Game design for the youngest kids is understandably well outside the scope of any program, let alone something most children at this age would understand. That does not mean you cannot include anything design related; it just means that you have to keep that well in reserve. This is perhaps the most crucial stage of development of the brain, but the focus is on acquiring as much experience as possible. Infants have very few options for exploring their environment and the world is a vast and terrifying place for them. Their chief ability for expression at this age is crying and laughing or the fixed stare of wonderment while they work towards language acquisition.

With this in mind, the focus for game design should be on play and exploration, not creation. You can sneak that in during the last few months of this period as a transition to the age of two. It is important to keep in mind that kids at this age are still learning their environment and how much they can manipulate it and what is in it. One of the reasons babies place things in their mouths and touch everything is to build up the suite of sensual experiences needed to not only determine what tastes good, but also to identify the world at large through physical sensations. Remember, infants’ eyes still develop in the first few months and object permanence does not yet exist for them. If they cannot see it, they are unaware of it. Hearing helps, but sight is the main sense of humans.

For these reasons and others, rather than zeroing in on game design practices, kids should be encouraged to play. The type of play that helps with game design has some structure to it, but still freeform enough that it does not feel controlled. The play also invites failure and includes it as part of the fun. Silliness is a great way to diffuse any feelings of judgment for failed attempts. Some of the activities that help build the playfulness and imagination useful for game design includes:

Playing with the sounds of language/singing
Playing with shapes and colors
Using tools/toys in unintended ways (e.g. pots and pans as drums)
Programs like First 5’s “Read. Talk. Sing.”

How to Create Age-Appropriate Game Design Tools

Interactions and Play for 0-24 Months

How to Create Age-Appropriate Game Design Tools

Once a gamer reaches a certain point, there are few limits on the types of games that can be designed. Most people reach a level of experience where trying their hand at tweaking or creating a game whole-cloth is easily done. Kids, on the other hand, are another matter. While the bulk of age-appropriate tools are aimed at a younger audience, there are plenty of tips and tricks here for budding designers looking to hone their abilities or target a specific audience for their existing designs. So, while you might be inclined to skip this section, there is something here for everyone.

To start with, game design is not a discipline for just a few people. The ability to make a satisfying game is available to practically all ages. That said, certain stages of development have to be passed before a designer can take on the challenge of creating some games. The following sections offer a rough breakdown of the ages and the types of games and tools one is likely to create well without much input. Much of this corresponds with the games you can find on store shelves as well as research into child development and learning processes used by groups such as California’s First 5 program.

Following a heuristic like this gives you a good measuring stick to keep players and designers interested. One of the golden rules here is to provide just enough frustration to keep people coming back for more without them feeling there is no forward progress. As much as the STEAM model showed the scientific elements for experimentation, age-appropriate tools look at the puzzles that are both designing and playing games. When the challenge level has the right balance, the brain wants to master the task. That building sense of frustration turns into one of sweet victory and elation when all the pieces seem to fall into place. Design above or below that level and you lose an audience – not just the one you wanted, everyone. The description of the game, the rules, the components, and the skill challenge have to align or people will feel cheated out of the promised experience.

Learning by Design – The STEAM Module, Part 8

Learning by Design – Tools and Games for 0-24 Months

Learning by Design – The STEAM Module, Part 8

Advocating for game design aside, good games are not made purely through playing games. Yes, there is a lot you can learn from play, but it does not explain the hows or whys behind that knowledge. In other words, a lot of the theoretical elements (and thus the vast majority of 21^st century skills) are lost if the focus is just on how the game works. Good games, the kind people remember fondly years after they are lost or shoved on the back of a closet shelf, are not a collection of rules; they are contextual and rely on knowledge of the world. Other than game designers, few people reminisce about their favorite game mechanic. That is a really nerdy thing to do, even for designers.

Like anything, however, games can be overused. Game play and design work best when used to supplement a class or as a library program. They are not a catch-all or a cure for the learning blues. The STEAM model is an explanation for how game design can help, not a road map. This matters since you get diminishing returns using the same tools or playing the same game repeatedly in regards to skill improvement. So, why include the STEAM model if it is not a justification for Learning by Design?

There are too many ways a game can be arranged. No matter how much research and discussion are done on game design, the modules for the types of board games cannot account for everything. Games that use a track have endless variety. It does not matter how quickly players might get bored of roll-and-move mechanics when there are more themes, designs, and art that can decorate a game board. Players might not like the game, but younger players still enjoying random dice rolls will. But what keeps people coming back to a game is the dressing as much as the mechanics. For instance, Monopoly is loathed and still remains popular. One of the reasons is the building mechanic. It is one of the few simple games (compared to wargames) that has this option.

Keeping this idea in mind, designers can make “boring” games fun simply by changing the theme and/or a rule. That cannot be done if the designer does not know the audience and their world. Game designers have to make use of everything they can to build memorable games. The modules can guide you in learning how to make those games, but it cannot turn rules into experiences. That comes from the dressing as much as it does how you describe the game’s rules. Suggestions and examples will be plentiful in the sections detailing the modules, but they barely scratch the surface.

Learning by Design – The STEAM Module, Part 7

How to Create Age Appropriate Game Design Tools

Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 7

All this talk about STEAM for game design as a teaching tool threatens to suck all the fun and joy out of the idea. So, why include it? For one, there is the continued need to show that education does not have to be boring and that play is a legitimate part of the learning process. Children learn by imitating as much as by internalizing facts and observation. There is a reason counting cubes and number lines help students achieve mastery of math. This is a concrete demonstration of how numbers work.

When researchers are working on making conceptual models real by demonstrable means with experiments, they have to use imagination and training to figure out the best approach. Sometimes this means rethinking how a device can be used. Other times it is pushing the envelope of what technology can do. In either case, people need to play with the ideas. Play is essential in daily life because it is how we solve puzzles. People borrow ideas from other skills and apply them to new tasks. The more experience people have, the more they do this. Analogous structures allow leaps of creativity, but it really is the brain at play.

The brain rewards us for these “ah-ha!” moments with a dopamine boost. It feels good to find something new or overcome an obstacle. That victory is the brain rewarding new knowledge and mastery, which is why people (especially kids) love playing games. For children there are far more new experiences to gain than for adults who have lived in the world long enough to make connections between disparate events and lose the sense of wonderment. Yet, a pervasive undertone informs the culture that these sensations mean learning is not occurring.

Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 6

Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 8

Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 6

Mathematics

Game design relies heavily on mathematics to work. There are several branches of math that are needed to make a good game work, but only one that can provide the sense of free agency and equal chances of winning in a game: probability. Since this is more of an advanced field of math compared to the work most patrons and students (especially younger ones) will be readily familiar with, it is easily digestible using discrete probability mechanics in the form of dice, cards, spinners, and so forth. This is a practical application of probability and does not require any theoretical understanding of the underlying math.

Math is used to take several metrics during game design as well as game play. From the beginning of the design, the length of time required to play the game will have a huge influence on how the players interact with the game and their continued desire to. Designers have to find the break point (without necessarily plotting it out on a graph) between fun and time. The science behind this is tied in with the notion of “flow” and the psychological state of being so immersed in an experience that people wish to continue. Too much, and the game drags, a common problem that people complain about with Monopoly; too little, and players will feel frustrated. A good balance can be measured and compared to the artistic ideal of the designer to see if the game meets the requirement desired.

The other key metric math uses is to determine balance. Even if the game uses an asymmetrical starting point, the math must not favor any one player unless the object of the game is to see who can survive the longest with the fewest resources with game play taking two or more rounds to see how each participant fares (e.g. fox and geese, Twilight Imperium, Smallworld). Most games provide the same end goals for the players, but their particular strategies are linked to the strength and weaknesses their resources provide. While this is on the higher end of the complexity spectrum, it is used for virtually all game designs.

Most designers and players will not look at the math in depth like this (though for some designs they should), but through playing and iteration, the designers can experience the effects of the probability and other math that makes play possible. The adjustments made to the rules are often as much procedural as they are evaluative. So, while this is more intuitive, designers do have the ability to examine the mathematical structures used in facilitating game play and can address them directly or use any other element of STEAM to adjust the mechanics as needed. This is akin to what scientists do when they conduct experiments.

Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 5

Learning by Design – The STEAM Model, Part 7